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Dad Envy

By Judith Warner December 21, 2006 10:35 pmDecember 21, 2006 10:35 pm

Max and I came home to New York this past week, and in between strolls down Missed Real Estate Opportunity Lane – the $139,000 Tribeca loft! The $250,000 2BR/2BA w/sep DR! The insider-priced, $100,000 one-bedroom overlooking the Natural History Museum! – we went to a couple of movies.

One of these was “The Holiday,” the life-swap film starring Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz.

It begins with the twin story lines of Iris Simpkins (Winslet) and Amanda Woods (Diaz), the former a journalist living in Surrey, the latter a movie trailer producer in Los Angeles. Both women, unlucky in love, feel the need to escape their lives and, after a bit of online searching, find sanctuary in the form of a home exchange. There is then a great deal of screeching and sighing, as Iris discovers Amanda’s opulent pool, designer bedroom and home entertainment complex, and Amanda navigates the country roads and plumbing of Olde England in the most inappropriate clothing possible.

But then, into Amanda’s life stumbles Iris’ luscious-looking brother Graham (Jude Law), and sparks fly. Graham is perfect: gorgeous, intelligent (he wears smart-person glasses) and visibly well-off. He talks. He emotes. His bookcases are painted in the most perfect shade of French blue, he keeps a cow in the garden of his bucolic stone-walled manse, and – equally important – he has two little girls! Two lovely, pretty, articulate and clever little girls who happen – fortunately for Diaz – to no longer have a Mum.

By the time we met Graham’s daughters, we – the entire movie theater and I – were in love, not just with Law (whose face, it always seems to me, has something of the serial killer about it), but with the entire conceit of the movie. We laughed, we cried, and I in particular made little hooting sounds as the ever-deepening layers of Graham’s perfection were revealed. A Dad who sews! A Dad who cries! A Dad who multi-tasks, playing “Mr. Napkinhead” with his daughters, while communing with Diaz. A dad who knows how to make play tents and cocoa, and somehow is ingenious enough with his childcare arrangements to be able to slip out for a tryst in the middle of the night!
(“I never met a guy who talks as much as me,” Amanda tells him in bed. “… could you just for now, be quiet. Please.”)

Law’s character is not, apparently, supposed to be funny. Neither is he unrealistic, said writer-director Nancy Meyers when I called her to ask what kind of febrile imagination could have dreamt up a man like this. She explained that “Mr. Napkinhead” was actually the brainchild of her (ex) husband, who was “just adorable,” she said, back in the day when their girls were little. Graham was also, she said, inspired by a truly wonderful widower of her acquaintance, once the husband of her best friend, who became a magnet for women after his wife passed away.

“He’s a man who has had a lot of pain and has lost his wife,” she scolded, speaking slowly and somewhat incredulously, as though shocked to be communicating with someone so obviously lacking in the basics of human compassion.

Let’s agree to just call that My Bad.

Remember when, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we used to wax philosophical about the world that the female imagination would create? Over time, it has brought us a string of iconic images: “Thelma and Louise,” for example, in the early 1990s; gyno-centric soft porn in France, later in the same decade. Now, for the age of high-stakes parenting, we have a fitting development: equal opportunity images of impossibility. Clearly, it is no longer just moms who risk being driven to distraction trying to live up to media-imposed ideals of personal perfection. The evil demon of imagery has turned its sights on dads, too.

It’s all par for the course. As Susan Faludi observed in “Stiffed” (1999), modern man is no longer the central subject of his own life story. He’s increasingly an object, too – and in the case of Law in “The Holiday,” he’s been perfectly objectified to absorb and reflect the oxytocin-stoked fantasies of the kinds of women who today are getting their voices heard in film, TV and the media generally.

It’s Mommy Porn, pure and simple, and if I were a Dad (and really, really had nothing better to do), I might sit down and start waxing outraged about the representational evils of the emerging female hegemony. Or I might just, as Max did the other night, sigh and shed the tiniest of tiny tears as Diaz, Law and the two adorable little girls held hands and gazed up at Law’s hand-sewn playroom stars.

For not only had my husband been priced out of Manhattan; not only, despite his smart-looking new glasses and copious book collection, would he never end up with Cameron Diaz (I hope), but he’d never, in this brave new world, measure up as a perfect-enough Dad.

You said it sister ! For more on Law’s creepy portrayals of modern manhood check out his intensely (though unintentionally) disturbing turn in Breaking & Entering. Jude plays a young architect married to beautiful but distant Swedish wife (Robin Penn Wright) with an adorable but autistic child. Naturally he decides the best cure is to sleep with Juliette Binoche. It ain’t easy being Jude Law.

I couldn’t agree with you more on your observations about how our idealisms played out in movies feed our own sense of failures and disappointments in ourselves or in our significant others, whether it’s consciously or unconsciously. Ideals are simply not human or real. Americans, in particular, seem to set very high standards for what we are all supposed to look like. In this regard, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how some (definitely not all) Americans recently have been able to forgive and accept, rather than crucify, role models for their human transgressions, like Miss USA and Ted Haggert. Are we realizing the folly and hypocracy of idealisms? Would the humans who were stuck in the role of representing an ideal been so destructive on themselves (with respect to drugs and alcohol) had it not been for “our” collective pressure for them to live up to “our” imposed morals and ideals imbedded in their roles? Or, do we need these role models to fail so that we can scapegoat our own failures in living out collective ideals and morals?

“the oxytocin-stoked fantasies of today’s female ruling class” … hello, what female ruling class? There will be a female ruling class when women are 51% of the House or Senate, or outnumber men as CEOs etc. Right now, women are desperately underrepresented at the controlling echelons of finance, law, medicine, politics, business … everything that involves money and/or power. Phrase should read, “the oxytocin-stoked fantasies of the movie’s writer and/or director”. Happy Holidays.

Excactly right. When Jude Law opened the door to reveal his “dark secret” — his two adorable little girls — I actually hooted. It’s a kind of emotional porn, and his perfection was so complete it killed the movie. The last hour, in effect, is spent waiting for Cameron Diaz to realize what’s instantly obvious: that she has found the most ideal man to walk on God’s Green Earth. If you’d like to see a romance about real people, that is still moving and uplifting and restorative in re: your faith in love, see “Sweet Land,” now in limited release.

I haven’t and probably won’t see the movie (at least until it comes on cable), but I have two observations. First, it’s a MOVIE, not a dirty commie plot. For heaven’s sake, can’t we Americans just enjoy ourselves anymore? Does everything have to have a dark side–even romantic comedy? Times are tough; the world is probably at its ugliest point since the Great Depression and World War II. Did anybody take 1930s musicals literally? Of course not. They went to the movies to escape their pain and fears, not to reinforce them with neurotic preoccupations about whether or not they could dance as well as Fred Astaire.

Second, for at least two decades men have seen themselves portrayed in film and on television as utter morons interested in nothing more than boobs and beer. Isn’t it high time the American male had something more to aspire to?

I thought “The Holiday” was really about how devalued women have made themselves and marital and sexual partners.

What emotionally stable, financially secure guy would want even a looker like Cameron Diaz who is so emotionally and sexually unavailable?

The Kate Winslet character while more emotionally attractive brings nothing to a marriage. No longer young, no money, no sexual innocence, and no parents seemingly interested in her life! Kate & brother Jude reunite at Christmas and their parents are no where to be seen!

Pretty clear neither couple would work out so ending the movie with a New Year’s eve party made sense.

A generic family man type who raised 4 children very unlikely were I young in this society today would I marry. Nothing in it for a man anymore. Bet the financial and emotional ranch on dowerless women with lost sexual innocence who have the absolute right to end the marriage at will to walk off with half the family’s assets, the children, and a pension in the form of child support?

This column encapsulates the flaws in the difference feminist’s credo. Difference feminists believe that all men are different from all women. And they get confused when they see examples that don’t fit their stereotypes of fatherhood or motherhood. They are big believers in role models, and in many ways tend to be very traditional people.

Of course that is an inaccurate view of gender differences, because in reality there is a lot of statistical overlap. Even the so called mothering hormone “oxytocin” is found in men, and often spikes for new fathers just like for new mothers. And in today’s parenting world it is not unheard of to find single fathers, even if they are not nearly as common as single moms.

But alas, in Warner’s book Jude Law’s character has committed the cardinal sin of encroaching on the sacred domain of motherhood.

Jude Law is terrific looking, and while I have not seen this film, he is playing an ideal daddy and husband material. So did Cary Grant in Houseboat, but that did not make all males feel horrible as they knew even Cary did not get Sophia Loren who had a thing for older Italian males like Carlo Ponti. Nice to think women can get excited about metrosexual nice guys instead of macho asses.

Why can’t a girl fantasy movie have a fantasy dad in it? What is wrong with the fantasy male being a perfect father? I loved going to this movie it was just the kind of snowflake light entertainment that I wanted, although I really hadn’t thought about the movie again until I read this. But should I be whinning that, how come I’m not as successful as Amanda or sexy as Iris? Men can just suck it up too.

To Stephen – I think you’re misreading the intent of the entry. Judith is not criticizing the fact that this movie portrays a man in a traditional female domain (raising children), she is simply decrying the unrealistic expectations that were placed on women for so long in Hollywood, are now being transferred to men. It was unrealistic to hold every mother to the June Cleaver standard, and it’s just as unrealistic to hold every father to that standard, post-feminism.

Nancy- perfect #10 – is on the mark! It’s a movie! Do we have to read so much into fantasy? I had to convince my best friend that “Bridges of Madison County” was fiction when the book came out – while of course she was in the middle of a divorce after 30 years of marriage. And everyone else who’s written has a point – valid – to make, too. We are all ego-centric. We see it all as it applies to “me”.

Thank you, Judith, for another lively, wonderful column. Sounds like the “The Holiday” is not to be missed. Jude Law as an impossibly perfect Dad of adorable daughters – well that’s BLISS, truly! A good antidote to the melancholic Jude as Enman in Cold Mountain. And pity poor Dr. Klein – “generic family man type who raised four children” who commented here that he wouldn’t marry today – did he REALLY raise his children? Rather doubt it; sounds like he paid his “trophy wife” to do that job. What goes around, comes around!

This may be only a recent manifestation of our long-standing propensity to offer worlds of fantasy to ourselves instead of support for the realities of life’s daily struggles. I remember leaving the film of “Wuthering Heights” muttering to myself about how that kind of impossible infatuation as desirable ideal undermines the task of developing meaningful relationships that involve taking out the garbage and changing diapers.

Graham is hardly the model of male perfection. Widowed raising very young children among other things he’s a heavy drinker. When he shows up drunk at Kate’s home unannounced to sleep, who’s watching his motherless children?

Well, the truth is that many men could be the Jude Law character some of the time… they just either can’t or won’t be MOST of the time. Just as we could be supermoms and hot in bed and wickedly intellegent (as we are all the time!) but sometimes we’re dopey, boring. We don’t use our skills. We aren’t our WOW!!! selves. That’s why emotional porn has its lure; it’s defined by its climax, by the characters’ likability. For me, that’s OK, because it makes me feel like I do have all those qualities in ME. I suppose it’s a question of your mindframe whether you see it as forcing some unrealistic ideal on an already tired population or a whimsical throw-off which makes you sappy and “in the mood”…

Thank you.What a breath of fresh air. Finally, an article that isn’t afraid of stating the “politically incorrect” truth that men are, nowadays, just as objectified as women, just not necessarily in the same way. Normal people can always be part of that fantasy to others, but those (of both genders) seeking anyone who is the “whole package” will certainly spend most of their lives doing just that–fantasizing.

The prevailing perceptions seem to be that Jude Law character is some sort of anomaly that is magically created by an overactive wife’s fantasy or an ocytocin glan run amok. Having raised two children with a wife for 4 years and as a single parent for 18 years I can offer this up…

Lot’s of those Da Da qualities that you all are going Ga Ga about came to me and I would guess other Dads, because of opportunity and necessity and a long road of learning.

Until the mother of my children passed away, the opportunity to hone up the cocoa making, button sewing and homework helping, etc., was not available to me because the job was already taken. Not to mention that my wife, like most wives that I have encountered, aren’t all that generous about sharing those kinds of duties since they derive so much self esteem from that role.

Further down this road is this; Those feelings of love and nurturing that Mr Law portrayed so seductively, come from I believe , from loving and nurturing over time. I know in my own case the love a parent has for ones own, grows with exposure over many cups of cocoa and lots of buttons.

If you want your husband to be more like the Jude law character then back off a bit and let him have the reigns for a while– probably a long while.

The movie did manage to work in an extremely creepy component to Jude Law’s fake-sterling character, in having him be in most visible shill for (of all things) RANDOM HOUSE, which was gratingly promoted on the spines of books throughout the film, along with “The Corrections” (FSG, interestingly), the cover of which must have appeared center screen at least three times.

Anyone have any thoughts on that?

In fact, book publishing came across as a very sinister thing, I thought, in the movie. Editing, I guess, was supposed to be saintly (since both Amanda and Graham did it), but I thought their unarticulated connections to all the product placement made them both seem duplicitous.

By contrast, the childless writer Rufus Sewell seemed like a sweetheart. I wanted to read his pages.